How to use this Page

More animal combo silliness! I think I found a theme for this year’s SkADaMo!

What is SkADaMo you might ask? Check it out here.

This Day in World History

November 13, 354

Augustine of Hippo born

On November 13, 354, in a small town named Tagaste in Roman Numidia (modern Algeria) near the port of Hippo (now Annaba), Augustine—one of the preeminent early Christian thinkers—was born. Though his mother was a devout Christian, he was not baptized as an infant.

As a child and young teen, Augustine proved a ready scholar. While his family owned land, they could not afford further studies. However, a wealthy man from Tagaste paid Augustine’s expenses for more advanced study in Carthage. Three years later, the young man returned to Tagaste and opened his own school; soon after, he moved to Carthage to teach rhetoric. He gained some success, had a son with the young woman he lived with, and became attracted to the dualistic religion of Manichaeism. In 384, he moved to Italy and gained a teaching post in Milan. By this time, he had lost interest in Manichaeism but was in the midst of a period of intense spiritual turmoil. After two years of professional success and this inner tumult, he resigned his position and prepared himself to adopt Christianity. Baptized by Ambrose, bishop of Milan, in 387, he soon suffered the death of his mother and his son. (The son’s mother he seems to have cast aside.) Back in Africa, Augustine became a priest in 391 and was named bishop of Hippo just five years later.

For the next 35 years, he became one of the leading thinkers of the Church. His Confessions, written around 400, recounts his own spiritual journey and celebrates God’s glory. He played significant roles breaking the Donatist and Pelagian heresies, thereby helping shape orthodox Roman Catholic beliefs. His masterwork, The City of God—written in the wake of the sack of Rome by Visigoths led by Alaric—is an extensive argument against paganism and offers a vision of the true destiny of the world as the unfolding of God’s will. Ironically, he died not long before invading Vandals captured Hippo and Carthage, putting his homeland into non-Roman—and non-orthodox Christian—hands.

“This Day in World History” is brought to you by USA Higher Education.
You can subscribe to these posts via RSS or receive them by email.

The Illustration Friday word for the week is “burning”. Ok, this is a bit of a stretch, but it sort of works, eh?

I’m heading to the SCBWI L.A. Illustrator’s Day tomorrow and this is what I entered for the illustration contest they are having. We were asked to illustrate something for the following sentence:

“It was night, and the rain fell; and falling, it was rain, but, having fallen, it was…”

So I thought … a flood. A flooded zoo to be exact. I know, always with the stretching I am.

Anyway, wish me luck!

Loosely based on Favourite Food theme (forgive me...)

 Subscribe in a reader

So. I've been a Nerdfighter since the very beginning of the calendar year, when John Green and his brother Hank Green formed Brotherhood 2.0, a videoblog based on their mutual decision to forego textual conversation for the year of 2007.

Those of us who are fans and have been following along have been called Nerdfighters ever since February 17, 2007 when John posted this video, during which he sang the Nerdfighter's theme song. Other verses have since been written by various and sundry Nerdfighters, including yours truly.

Back in March, the Green brothers formed the Foundation to Decrease WorldSuck, which collects monetary donations from folks, then uses the funds to make the world a better place. But recently, after a family vacation in the Dominican Republic, the Greens got the Nerdfighters all fired about being microfinanciers, through Kiva.org.

And, as of today, John has figured out the Law of Compound Nerdfighting, which means that NERDFIGHTERS NEED YOU! To enlist as Nerdfighters or at least to help with the Kiva sponsorships going on over at B2.0.

Nerdfighters! Hoo-ah!